Monday, December 31, 2012

http://www.healthextremist.com

What pH Should Our Bodies Have? How Much Alkalizing is Needed?

In order for our bodies to maintain the best living environment , the
optimal level is close to 7.4. This is at a slightly alkalizing state.
Although, 7.36 to 7.44 is also an acceptable range.
In order for blood to effectively, act as a medium for oxygen and
other vital nutrients, the pH needs to be close to this specific range.
Deviations too far in either over direction of alkalizing or being too
acidic can be harmful. However, typically due to the average American
diet most individuals are overly acidic and are not concerned or aware
of the importance of alkalizing. Really, a balance of these two ends of
spectrum (alkalizing and acidic) is key!
Our bodies contain alkaline reserves and will fight to re-balance any
deviations of fluctuating levels. However, the reserves are limited
and in order to keep them intact it is important to eat the right kinds
of foods which are alkalizing. The excess of the alkali from the
alkalizing foods can be stored to neutralize acids in the future.

Why Do People Become Overly Acidic?

Well, it’s not just diet that causes an imbalance and a need for
alkalizing. Even though most tissues in our body are alkaline in
nature, our bodies creates acid which needs to be neutralized. This
occurs from using muscles, breathing, and digesting certain foods.

Problems with Being too Acidic

Most individuals in the US do not eat diets that are alkalizing,
instead they eat deadly diets high in conventional produced animal
products, grains, refined foods, processed foods, carbohydrates, and
sugars. Diets containing these foods can produce about 100mEq of acid
per day. This amount of acid is nearly twice what the body can handle.
Without alkalizing the body needs to take vital minerals in order to
neutralize the acid.

Why Alkalizing is Important!

Having too many acid-forming foods and not enough alkalizing foods
can cause serious health consequences. When the body does not have
sufficient alkalizing substances and is overly acidic, the body will
take from the bones or vital tissues . This is very damaging and impairs
the body’s ability to repair or detoxify and will cause a person to be
more susceptible to disease and illness.
Having acidic conditions and not alkalizing can cause negative
effects such as: acne, headaches, joint pain, indigestion, low immune
system, weak hair and nails, trouble losing weight, trouble gaining
weight, and allergies.
There are also many more serious conditions which can occur from
acidic conditions such as yeast and bacteria thriving in the digestive
track, cancer cells thriving in acidic environments, yet have been shown
to perish when alkalizing. All our organs and glands can be influenced
by our pH level including; heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, thyroid,
colon, kidneys, etc.

What foods are alkalizing?

Fresh vegetables and fruits are some of the most highly alkalizing to the body.

Top 7 Alkalizing foods:

Alkalizing #1 – Lemons – Lemons are one of the most
alkalizing, a great way to start the day is with a glass of lukewarm
water with a fresh squeezed lemon or lime.

Alkalizing #2- Leafy greens- Greens such as: kale,
swiss chard, spinach, and turnip greens are very alkalizing for your
body and also are packed with rich vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and
phytochemicals.

Alkalizing # 4- Cucumbers and Celery – These are some of the most alkalizing foods you can eat. They quickly neutralize acids and aid in digestion.

Alkalizing # 5- Garlic - Garlic is
not only highly alkalizing it is also very important for overall health
as it boosts the immune system, is antibacterial and anti-fungal. Raw garlic is even more beneficial, see my post on the importance of raw garlic in your diet.

Alkalizing # 7-Avocados – Are also at the top of the list of alkalizing foods. You can see my recent post on the health benefits of avocados and how to ripen avocados. Avocados contain high amounts of essential vitamins, fatty acids, and amino acids.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Do you find yourself using the terms sweet potato and yam interchangeably? Join the club…What you need to know:
We’ll start with the bottom line. If you live in the US and buy your
groceries in a supermarket, you are most likely buying sweet potatoes.
Yams and sweet potatoes are actually 2 different species of the
angiosperm (flowering plant) family. According to the records of the Library of Congress:

Yams are a monocot (a plant having
one embryonic seed leaf) and from the Dioscoreaceae or Yam family. Sweet
Potatoes, often called ‘yams’, are a dicot (a plant having two
embryonic seed leaves) and are from the Convolvulacea or morning glory
family

Yams have their roots (pun intended) in Africa and Asia, where
hundreds of varieties are cultivated and eaten as a staple. “Yam” means
“to eat” in various African languages / dialects.
So how did sweet potatoes come to be called yams?
There are 2 major types of sweet potatoes in the US, the lighter
colored more round variety, and the orange elongated variety. In
colonial times, African slaves brought to the Americas mistakenly
identified the latter as the “yam” from back home. Fast forward a few
hundred years, the USDA decided to formally differentiate the 2
varieties of sweet potato by calling the darker orange ones yams, thus
perpetuating the tradition from the late 17th century.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Why You Should Naturally Whiten Teeth
Although there are many options to whiten teeth, all of the kits you
can purchase over the counter are loaded with harmful chemicals. The
chemical tooth whiteners typically contain coal tars, aspartame,
aluminum,floride and benzene. The over the counter
bleaches also have a very high acidity and are very abrasive which can
cause damage to teeth, tooth pain and/or sensitivity, and damage the
enamel. Not only are these chemicals harmful to your teeth and gums, the
toxic chemicals often leak from the trays or strips and are swallowed
or absorbed. As a result of the dangerous side effects and hazards with
over the counter whitening, many are now opting to choose methods to
naturally whiten teeth.
The great news is that all of these ways to naturally whiten teeth include using all eatable foods! So you don’t have to worry about ingesting harmful chemicals.

I have used all of these methods to naturally whiten teeth at one
time or another and have found that since most of these are included in
my diet or what I use for oral hygiene, my teeth have remained pretty
white and I haven’t had to spend extra trying to whiten them. These ways
to naturally whiten teeth can be used daily or weekly to keep your
teeth nice and white.

1.Apples: Apples have natural astringents that can
help whiten teeth. Apples also contain malic acid which helps dissolve
stains. To use it just slice an apple and rub the pieces on your teeth
for a couple of minutes.2. Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV): ACV can remove stains
on the surface of teeth. TO use it, use a soft brush and crush teeth
with it. Rise afterwards. ACV has been shown to be a very effective way
of naturally whitening teeth, however, it may take a couple of weeks of
consistent use to see results.3. Strawberries: Strawberries also contain malic
acid and can help remove stains and discolorations on teeth. You can
crush the strawberries and brush teeth with them or add a pinch of
baking soda and mix with strawberries. The mixture can be left on the
teeth for up to 5 minutes.4. Baking Soda: Baking soda is widely known for its
uses for household cleaning and whitening. Baking soda is among the
easiest and most efficient ways to naturally whiten teeth. Baking soda
is slightly abrasive and helps remove stains on teeth. Simply just brush
teeth with baking soda mixed with a little water to create a paste. Or
you can use a mixture of baking soda and coconut oil. This is also a
great homemade toothpaste. I use baking soda and coconut oil to brush my
teeth every day.5. Lemon or Orange Peels: Lemon and orange peels
acid content can eliminate stains on the surface of teeth. However, this
method of naturally whitening teeth should not be used daily as the
acid content may eventually wear down the enamel. Lemon juice can also
be combined with baking soda to naturally whiten teeth.6. Oil Pulling: Oil pulling is an
Ayurvedic technique which has been used to benefit oral health, prevent
and treat cavities, reduce plaque, improve gums and even whiten teeth.
Oil pulling is when you swish a spoonful of quality oil in your mouth
for up to 15 minutes. Then rinse your mouth. Sesame oil or coconut oil
can be used, just to name a few.7. Drink with a Straw: This last method of naturally
whitening teeth is more of preventative measure. Drinking through a
straw can help you avoid many stains as teeth with have less contact
with damaging drinks or substances. This can be very useful especially
if you drink tea and/or coffee which can increases surface stains on
teeth. You can find many options for glass and stainless steel straws
online.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Don’t be surprised if your doctor asks you to sit on the
floor at your next checkup. A new study says testing a person’s ability to sit
down and then rise from the floor could provide useful insight into their
overall health and longevity.
Brazilian researchers discovered an interesting link between
a person’s ability to sit and rise from the floor and the risk of being
6.5 times more likely to die in the next six years. The study, published
in the European Journal of Cardiovascular
Prevention, included a simple test in which more than 2,000 people ages
51 to 80 attempted to sit down on the floor and then stand back up using as
little support as possible.Health Problems Cause by Stress/Anxiety

Floors are Replacing Chairs

Chairs used to be a helpful tool to measure a person’s strength and
lower body fitness. Having a person stand up from a seated position
helped doctors assess a person's overall frailty and also if he or she
is likely to fall (and thereby at an
increased risk of fracture). It also measured a person’s
lower-body strength and agility.
But this new test has some real life
applications.
Instead of simply gauging a person’s ability to get up off
the couch, the sitting test helps identify risks associated with picking
up vital items—such as medicine or eyeglasses—that may drop on the
floor. It also can identify those at risk of spending hours (or longer)
on the floor after a fall—unable to get up or call for help.At-Home Remedies that Really Work

Aiming for a Perfect Score

The test used by the researchers required people to
sit on the floor from a standing position and then return to a standing position.
Speed wasn’t a factor in the scoring, but support was.
The more support a person required—including bracing with
a hand or knee or both—the lower the score for each action. A perfect score of
five for each action (sitting and standing) was the goal. Points and half points were deducted for
things like touching a hand or knee on the ground or pushing off with a hand on
one knee to stand up. Looking wobbly on the way up or down cost participants
half a point.
More than half the participants ages 76 to 80 failed the
tests, scoring 0 to 3. Not surprising around 70 percent of those under 60 earned
a near perfect or perfect score of 8, 9, or 10.Aspirin: The 2000-Year-Old Wonder Drug

Scores and Life Expectancy

People who scored 0 to 3 were 6.5 times more likely to
die during the course of the 6.3 year study, compared to people who scored from
8 to 10. Those with scores of 3.5 to 5.5 were 3.8 times more likely to die as the
high scorers—and those who scored in the 6 to 7.4 range were 1.8 times more likely
to die than those with the highest scores.
During the course of the study 159 of the 2,000 volunteers died,
with the majority of the deaths coming from the group that had the most trouble
getting up and down.
“Just two subjects that scored 10 died in the follow-up of
about six years,” said Claudio Gil Soares
de Araújo, a professor at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro who worked on
the study. If someone between the ages of 51 and 80 scores 10, “the
chances of being alive in the next six years are quite good,” he said.
“A 1-point increment in the [sitting-rising] score was
related to a 21 percent reduction in mortality," reported the investigators who
noted this is the first study to demonstrate the prognostic value of the
sitting-rising test,” said Araújo.7 Simple Ways to Manage Chronic Pain

It’s Not Just About Getting Up

The ease with which a person stands and sits clues doctors
in to a person’s ratio of muscle power
to body weight. But the researchers say there are other relevant issues. “It
is well known that aerobic fitness is strongly related to survival, but our
study also shows that maintaining high levels of body flexibility, muscle
strength, power-to-body weight ratio, and coordination are not only good for
performing daily activities but have a favorable influence on life expectancy,”
said Araújo.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The video below highlights an early physical education program from La
Sierra High School in California. As you watch the clip, you may be
surprised at the physical ability of the teenagers seen within. Many
youngsters today are not aware of the tremendous physical strength that
was often on display in previous generations. As I have said many times
before, strength is not new.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

This topic is often overlooked in the medical community. Diagnostic
imaging provides great visualization of structural problems, medications
help manage painful conditions, but how often do we consider that food
might have an impact on how we feel physically? We all know that we
feel tired after we eat a large meal, or feel ‘lousy’ after a fatty or
greasy meal; so why then do we often overlook the fact that food and
nutrients may contribute to painful symptoms? How does food
contribute to the healing process? While we don’t pretend to be
nutrition experts, or advocating any particular diet (though we
certainly have our opinions), please note that we simply hope to point
out common themes with foods and nutrients and how they contribute to
the perception of pain.

1) Inflammation or Pain is Driven by the Immune System.

2) Inflammation is the immune system doing its job; This is your body’s attempt to stop injury and initiate recovery.

3) 70% of the cells of the immune system operate in the gut!

4) Food can cause an immune system response. Food allergies can
reinforce a chronic immune system response. There is a reason certain
foods ‘upset our stomachs’

5) Elimination of certain foods can help your food! Corn, eggs, dairy, soy, sugar, wheat, yeast are all common food allergens. Think this might be you? Try eliminating one of these for a few days and see if your symptoms change!

6) Bacteria that live in the GI system can be a source of
inflammation. This can be from food, viruses, repeated antibiotics.
Probiotics are found in yogurts and certain vegetables and fruits.

7) Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) are well documented to have anti-inflammatory properties. These foods include: fish, flaxseed, walnuts.

9) Free radicals are naturally occurring, highly reactive molecules
that play an essential role in cellular repair and immune system
response. Free radicals work to break down cells. Tissue damage, injury, immune responses, pollution, and pesticides can all create free radicals.

10) Antioxidants can help control free radicals and control pain. This is found in fruits; particularly in cherry juice concentrate and blueberries!

11) Vitamins and supplements are ok, but real food is best. Vegetables, fruit and healthy meats will win EVERY time.

12) As with much of the nutrition world, there is tons of other
information out there on this topic…some good, some bad. Consult with a
qualified professional for more advice.

Monday, December 24, 2012

http://running.competitor.com

Whether you were battling an early season injury or simply slacked on
your training, you now find yourself one month away from a race you
signed up for a while ago. The problem is that you are nowhere near
race-shape. Can you make it to the starting line and walk away with a
respectable showing?
The short answer is yes, and even though you may be in for a ruder
awaking than some of your cross-training counterparts, there is still an
available means to perform your best and achieve what is realistically
possible on the day. Regardless of your circumstances for falling behind
on training, you can still salvage a good race by making the best use
of your workouts over an abbreviated period.
Being honest with yourself is the key to setting obtainable race
goals, proper workout paces and ensuring that you increase training
volume smartly to avoid getting hurt before race day. “My advice with
only four weeks to go is to not over-commit on the training. I know it
is tempting for people to ‘cram’ but running a race is not like writing
an exam,” explains professional runner and coach, Malindi Elmore. “It needs to be a mind-set of working with your body and maximizing advantages.”
A runner who was injured but diligent in their cross-training has a
far different prospectus than the runner struck with slacker-syndrome.
For the former, the outlook can be rather bright. “After working hard in
the gym cross-training, this athlete could expect to really run well
and get close to top form,” says coach Alicia Shay.
“It might not be a PR [but] there is a potential that they could take a
swing at their best time if they transition well from cross-training to
running workouts.”
A runner going from little training to guns blazing shouldn’t expect a
personal best but, “They could expect to gain a decent amount of
fitness before race day,” explains Shay. Perhaps you’ve consistently
been running but haven’t done structured workouts or aren’t quite
race-day sharp. “It would be difficult to run a PR off only four weeks
of working out but this runner could build fitness quickly and expect to
run a solid race.”
Keep the momentum going and a personal best might be in sight with only a few more weeks of focused workouts.

Key Workouts and Training Volume

Threshold Workouts: “Basically, threshold workouts
will get you more bang for your buck in terms of fitness without beating
up the body muscularly and systemically,” says Shay. Aim for 2-3 of
these workouts in the early weeks to build your base.

Below Race-Pace: True speed sessions are incredibly
taxing, and with only four weeks until race day it’s safer to do sets
of strides. “3 sets of strides per week of 6-8 x 20-30 seconds,”
suggests Shay. You don’t want them all-out, but rather getting a faster
turnover while staying controlled.

Volume: Building mileage isn’t as important as
focusing on quality workouts with only four weeks to go until your race.
“I recommend increasing volume week 1, no more than 5 to 10 percent of
previous mileage or minutes cross-training, holding steady week 2,
decreasing 5 to 10 percent week 3 and then decreasing 20 to 30 percent
week 4 leading into the race,” says Shay. If you haven’t been doing many
miles prior, stick with a number that you’ve safely handled in the past
and ‘spend’ your miles on the quality runs rather than easy ones.

Predicting Your Showing
You’ve put in the work, race day is nearing, and you’d like a gauge
on what to expect time-wise. “A good prediction of what your goal
race-pace should be is the pace that you can maintain for a set of [four
to six] 1,000 or 1,200 meters repeats with 2-3 minutes recovery. For a
5K, race pace will probably be slightly faster and for a 10K it will be
slightly slower,” explains Shay. The time to do this would be your last
quality session in week 3.
Then, use your last quality session in week 4 to prime you for the
race. “The key is to get to know the pace — not to get a hard workout
in…most people start their races too fast and positive split and the
last workout is meant to teach the body the appropriate pace for an
even-paced race at goal time,” says Elmore.
If you’re tight on training time, having a solid race and potentially even a great race, is well within your reach.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

NaturalNews) The digestive tract is loaded with trillions of
microorganisms that form a natural ecosystem commonly called the gut
flora. Certain lifestyle stressors throw off the natural symbiosis and
cause a rise in pathogenic microbes, chronic gut inflammation and damage
to the gut lining. Healthy micro flora balance is a key health
essential.

The beneficial micro flora digest our food and produce
enzymes that metabolize protein into absorbable amino acids. These key
enzymes also transport key vitamins, minerals and other nutrients
through the intestinal wall and into the blood stream where they are
effectively carried to cells that are in need of these nutrient
packages.

These beneficial species also help the body produce and
metabolize vitamin K2, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, folic acid and pantothenic
acid. Without adequate microflora production, the body will suffer from
poor calcium metabolism, neuromuscular function and chronic inflammatory
conditions due to deficiencies in these very important nutrients.

Two arms of the gut flora

The
gut flora has two major arms. The first arm senses our environment by
reading the environmental toxins that are coming into the body. When
environmental factors such as dust, chemicals, animal hair and pollen
fall on the mucous membranes, the progenic bacteria sense and react to
them. The second arm is responsible for immune activation and
inflammatory based reactions.

When the first arm is damaged, the
second arm begins to become hyperactive which leads to autoimmune
reactions. Depending upon the genetic tendencies of the individual, this
can result in asthma, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple
sclerosis, Hashimoto's or Graves thyroiditis, fibromyalgia, Crohn's
disease, etc.

Contaminants destroy gut flora balance

Antibiotics
are the most lethal thing for our microbial balance. After a round of
antibiotics it will take at least four to eight weeks to reestablish the
gut. This time period
is an opportunistic window for parasites to establish themselves on the
gut wall. Eating conventional meat, dairy and poultry products can be
as dangerous as taking antibiotic prescriptions due to the amount of
antibiotics present in these products.

Foods high in sugar and
processed carbohydrates increase the number and variety of different
strains of Candida in the body. These foods also promote the growth of
parasitic worms in the gut environment.

Medications of all types
including contraception pills and corticosteroids are extremely
hazardous to the gut flora. Dental fluoride treatments and fluoride
based toothpaste are damaging to the microbial balance. Chlorinated
water is particularly dangerous as it sterilizes our gut and repeated
exposure destroys the progenic bacteria in the gut.

A diet high
in fermented veggies and drinks such as coconut water kefir, ginger
beer, raw sauerkraut, kombucha and kimchi help restore microbial
balance. Fermented, raw dairy from 100 percent organic, grass-fed cows
and goats is outstanding for gut health. This would include amasai, raw
cheese and fermented whey. These are some of the best probiotic carriers
and have been used for thousands of years by healthy cultures all over
the world.

The rest of the diet should be rich in good fats such
as coconut, avocados, olive oil and sprouted nuts and seeds. Clean
animal foods such as grass-fed beef, organic poultry and eggs are highly
recommended. Probiotic supplements are especially important to speed up
the restoration of the gut flora and maintain balance afterwards.

Intermittent
fasting for periods of 12 to 24 hours daily can be especially
beneficial for regulating the gut flora. These fasting periods should
include lots of fluids and fermented drinks that bring enzymes,
probiotics and organic acids into the gut environment. Longer cleansing
periods with fermented drinks are recommended from time to time.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Do Epsom Salt Baths Help Us Detox?

At the surface, it didn’t make much sense to me how these baths would
help detox. Then I started learning about Sulfur. Sulfur is the 8th
most common element in the human body by mass (4). It’s used in every
area of the body in one way or another. Here’s a brief overview:

Sulfate is needed for proper pancreatic enzyme action

Sulfate is essential at forming the mucin proteins that line the gut walls

Sulfur containing compounds are a very important part of Phase 2 detox in the liver

Sulfate is necessary for the formation of brain tissue and proper neurotransmitter function

Sulfate is needed for proper joint lubrication and function

This isn’t going to be an in-depth talk on Sulfur, but I just want to
highlight some point’s readers of this blog probably care deeply about.
Bad digestion, detox, bad brain status and hurting joints are
all things many of us struggle with. And it turns out; Sulfur plays a
major role in all of these.
Interesting to note: there are 3 ways to get more sulfates into your
body. Eating it, absorbing it through the skin, or creating it from
methionine and cysteine. The problem is: the ability to absorb it from
eating sulfur containing foods is very inefficient (5). And if you have
IBD or any gut dysbiosis, it’s likely even worse (6).
Read More

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Take this for what it is worth. I'm not sure if the same results found
with bikers and marathoners would be similar in resistance training. I
have used Ibuprofen as well as other NSAIDS over the years and still do
from time to time, although less now that I train to train and not to
compete. I remember Lyn Jones, former coach for Team USA Weightlifting
as well as Team Australia telling me that any serious lifter needs
anti-inflammatories "and not the kind you give your Grandmother for
arthritis". Anybody who lifts hard and heavy for any length of time will
eventually become familiar with "cumulative microtrauma". That is a
word that I heard, but never understood until about the age of 40. Then I
began to appreciate it's meaning.

Personally I would not advise using NSAIDs (or any other substance) in
order to work through a real injury. I have to admit that I have tried
that too, and it is a dead end road. It leaves you with long term or
even permanent damage. However using a little ibuprofen, naprosin, or
even aspirin over the years to take the edge off of soreness has not had
any lasting negative side effects that I can discern. Be smart and keep
the dosages and length of use within reasonable limits. Don't make your
recovery plan revolve around the pills. Learn to use ice, massage,
contrast baths or showers, and foam rollers as well. Eat healthy and
drink a lot of water.

For years, athletes have turned to ibuprofen as a pain reliever to
combat muscle soreness, with some even taking the drug before exercise
as a preemptive strike against tissue inflammation. However, in a new
study published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in
Sports & Exercise, researchers at Maastricht University in the
Netherlands report that taking ibuprofen and similar anti-inflammatory
painkillers before a workout yields no benefit, and instead may cause
temporary intestinal damage. For the study, researchers tested nine
healthy, active men four times at Maastricht's human performance lab.
According to the New York Times: During two of the visits, the men
rested languorously for an hour, although before one of the visits, they
swallowed 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and also the
morning of their trip to the lab. (Four hundred milligrams is the
recommended non-prescription dosage for adults using the drug to treat
headaches or other minor pain.) During the remaining visits, the men
briskly rode stationary bicycles for that same hour. Before one of those
rides, though, they again took 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night
before and the morning of their workout. At the end of each rest or
ride, researchers drew blood to check whether the men's small intestines
were leaking. Kim van Wijck, MD, a surgical resident at Orbis Medical
Center in the Netherlands who led the study, says the post-workout and
post-rest checkups found that blood levels of a protein indicating
intestinal leakage were much higher when bike riding was combined with
ibuprofen than when the test subjects rode without the drug or took it
without exercising. The testing also revealed that the protein levels
remained elevated several hours after exercise and ibuprofen
consumption. The findings support similar results from a 2006 study
conducted by researchers from Appalachian State University. In this
study, researchers found that runners at the Western States 100-Mile
Endurance Run who were regular ibuprofen users had small amounts of
colonic bacteria in their bloodstream post-race. Ironically, this
bacterial incursion resulted in "higher levels of systemic
inflammation," David C. Nieman, a Professor of Health and Exercise
Science at Appalachian State University, and who conducted the study,
told The New York Times. According to Nieman, an ultramarathoner
himself, the runners who frequently used ibuprofen ended the race with
higher overall levels of bodily inflammation after the race. They also
reported the same amount of post-race soreness as runners who had not
taken ibuprofen beforehand. Nieman says based on the findings from these
studies, athletes should reconsider taking anti-inflammatory
painkillers, including ibuprofen and aspirin, before and during
exercise. "The idea is just entrenched in the athletic community that
ibuprofen will help you to train better and harder," Dr. Nieman told The
New York Times. "But that belief is simply not true. There is no
scientifically valid reason to use ibuprofen before exercise and many
reasons to avoid it." According to the Times, van Wijck agrees. "We do
not yet know what the long-term consequences are" of regularly mixing
exercise and ibuprofen, she said. But it is clear that "ibuprofen
consumption by athletes is not harmless and should be strongly
discouraged."

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

This is the time of year when most endurance athletes are
starting to think about and perhaps even plan for the coming season. That makes
it a good time to remember what’s most important when it comes to training for
peak performance – the basics. Here are five fundamentals I frequently remind
myself of when designing a training plan. There are certainly more than five concerns,
but I believe these are the most basic. I’ve linked each of them to a previous,
more expanded discussion in case you want to learn more.

1. Train with
moderation. Frequently doing extreme workouts that leave you tired for two or more or days
afterward do more harm than good. If you’re not recovered from most of your training sessions within 48
hours of their completion then you’re not training with moderation. This will
eventually catch up with you. Over the long term, the body responds best when the
adaptive changes required are slight. This is not to say you should never do
extremely hard workouts. In fact, it’s been shown that a block of several days
of pushing one’s limits results in a greatly increased level of fitness once
adequate recovery has also had time to remove the resulting fatigue. In my
Training Bible books I call this “crash” training. For most athletes this should not be done more
frequently than once every six weeks.

2. Train consistently.
If you follow the first fundamental in your training then this one probably won’t
require anything more of you. It will more than likely take care of itself. Moderation
usually results in consistent training. That means you don’t miss workouts. In
training, zero is a big number. If you have a lot of them in your training log
then you are giving away hard-earned fitness. Sometimes zeroes simply can’t be
avoided. With the holiday season now in full swing it’s likely you’ll miss a
workout or two. The good news is that it’s probably several weeks until your
first A-priority race of 2013. Zeroes in the last 12 weeks prior to your race significantly
degrade performance.

3. Make workouts
increasingly like the race. As the training year progresses your workouts should become increasingly like
whatever it is you are training for. What you’ve done in the last six weeks of build
period training before the race has a greater impact on how well you will
perform on race day than what you did in the first six weeks of base period training.
If those last six weeks were devoted to race-like sessions then you will be
ready to race well. If the workouts were unlike the race then you are giving
away performance. That seems apparent to most athletes and yet this time of
year I read of a lot of athletes following what they call a “reverse”
periodization plan. What this means is that their workouts are race-like in the
base period but not like the race at all in the build period – training becomes
less like the race as the season progresses. It’s reversed. That’s what true reverse periodization would be
(periodization is correctly based on what you are training for, not the
modulation of absolute intensity and duration). What I think most of them mean
is that they are training with high intensity now and will do more miles later
in the year. For events like an Ironman that is not reversed at all. That’s
becoming more race-like. But for a cyclist who does crits that could be
disastrous at the first race. Lots of miles done slowly in the last few weeks
before such a short, high-intensity race is a sure way to race poorly.

4. Intensity is the
key. Sports science hasn’t been around very long as compared with the other
sciences. There are only a few things we have definitively learned from it
about training. Perhaps the most common lesson is that the key to performance
is how you modulate the intensity (power, pace, speed, effort, heart rate) of
training. Performance is not
dependent on how many miles or hours you do in a week - volume. Unfortunately,
most athletes seem to think volume is the Holy Grail. For the experienced and
serious athlete, in their order of importance, the keys to performance are 1)
race-like workout intensity, 2) race-like workout duration, and 3) weekly
volume. In fact, #3 is a distant third. I think the reason volume is so revered
by athletes is that it’s easy to measure. Just add up the daily miles.
Intensity, on the other hand, is hard to quantify. Now I should point out that
this holds true only for the experienced and serious athlete – those who have
been training with a performance focus for three or more years. Novices do
benefit remarkably by focusing on duration and training frequency (volume).
That’s because any intensity – including very low – will prove beneficial for
them. They just need to get to the finish line.

5. Rest when needed. If you employ an appropriate training load you will frequently need to reduce
the stress of training in order for your body to recover and adapt. Continued
stress without rest eventually results in a breakdown of some sort –
overtraining, illness, injury, or mental burnout. How often you recover and
what exactly you do to enhance recovery is an individual matter. Some athletes
recover quickly, others slowly. Some recover with light exercise; others need a
day off. So there is no set pattern that all of us should follow. For some the
best plan is to have no plan – recovery on demand. Recover when your body says it’s time and until it’s ready to go again.
Unfortunately, many athletes are extremely poor at listening to their bodies
and are likely to disregard the common indicators of fatigue thus pressing
ahead in order to get their weekly miles number in the training log. These
folks need a plan for when to rest. Such a plan should include weekly, monthly,
and annual rest periods.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Do athletes who push themselves too hard
become "overtrained," or do they just get really, really tired? This is
a longstanding topic of debate among coaches and physiologists, who
have been searching for some quantifiable way to diagnose the warning
signs of the sort of prolonged funk that sometimes sidelines endurance
athletes for months. Most recently, a group of French researchers ran an
interesting study, whose results were just posted online in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

The study recruited 24 highly trained triathletes, and divided them
into two groups. For three weeks, both groups performed their normal
levels of training. Then for one week, they cut back their training by
50%. Then for another three weeks, one group resumed their normal
training, while the other increased their training to about 140% of
normal levels to induce "overreaching" (the excessive fatigue that is
generally thought to precede full-on overtraining, but may also stimulate big fitness gains).
Before and after the second three-week block, the athletes completed a
maximal running test (laps around a track with the speed increasing
every three minutes to exhaustion), while having a whole bunch of
measurements performed on them -- blood tests every three minutes,
force-plate and video analysis of their biomechanics every lap, oxygen
intake measured through a mask, completing periodic cognitive tests
during the second part of the test, etc., etc.
Here's what the researchers found:

A discriminant analysis showed that the changes of eight
parameters measured during a maximal incremental test could explain
98.2% of the [overreaching] state (lactataemia, heart rate,
biomechanical parameters and effort perception). Variations in heart rate and lactataemia were the two most discriminating factors.

To be precise, what they found was that lactate levels and heart rate
were both much lower than expected in the overtrained athletes for any
given level of effort, including at lactate threshold. Their bodies
simply weren't willing/able to push as hard. This fits with a theory
that overtraining involves a suppression of the sympathetic
(fight-or-flight) nervous system, though not all studies support this
idea.
Anyway, the question is: will this be a useful way for athletes to
catch the signs of overtraining? The problem is that, in order for this
particular protocol to work, you'd have to perform regular maximal tests
and then look for unexpected deviations. It's not out of the question,
but I think you'd have a hard time convincing many athletes to insert
such a hard effort in at regular enough intervals to be useful.
I'm inclined to think that submaximal protocols have a more realistic chance of being adopted -- like the Lamberts and Lambert Submaximal Cycle Test that I blogged about a few years ago,
which essentially involves a 15-minute warm-up protocol at fixed
heart-rate levels. You do it before hard workouts, and the results help
you distinguish between acute fatigue (from the previous few days, in
which case you're free to go ahead and hammer your workout) and chronic
fatigue (in which case you're better to back off and let your body
recover). The protocol is designed for cycling, but I imagine that
similar ideas could be adapted for other activities like running.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Friday, December 14, 2012

One of the most effective ways to demonstrate an intervention is a
before and after, a test and retest. A great party trick, and way to
demonstrate the connectedness nature of fascia is to try and touch your
toes. Then spend a couple minutes rolling out your arches and bottom of
your feet with a golf ball. Again, try and touch your toes and see how
much further you can reach.

TIME = posterior muscles

The increased range of motion occurs because you have released and
lengthened the plantar fascia. This fascia is first part of the superficial back line
(SBL) outlined by Thomas Myers in his book, Anatomy Trains. As
discussed last week, anatomy trains are the lines of bone and connective
tissue running
throughout the body (see Sparta Point 7/27/11). These structures, particularly muscle and fascia,
organize the structural forces required for motion and link all parts
of the body.

As discussed last week, there are only 3 GRF variables, RATE, FORCE, and TIME. One of them is likely to be much higher, or much lower than the other two. In this week's example, if TIME is high, relative to FORCE and RATE, your superficial back line and posterior chain musculature are overactive.

Unfortunately not all of these muscles to the right can be released on
your own. Moreover, no one has time for each anterior muscle, so we must
focus on the few that are easist to access and tend to contain the most
trigger points. So spend about 1 minute on each side of these areas

As mentioned last week, one of the variables in your movement signatureTM can be low, so what do you do if your TIME is low rather than high?

We know that athletes
low on TIME must load down deeper, prolonging the amount of time on
your load and finishing the extension portion of the unloading. This
extension is accomplished primarily by the contraction of the muscles in
the back (posterior chain) such as the gastrocnemius and hamstrings. So
the opposing muscles
(antagonists) would be the flexors, or the anterior chain.

So if your TIME
is low, the antagonists are likely to be preventing this ability (see Sparta Point 11/28/12)..
Therefore, since antagonists tend to be on the opposing side, low TIME
athletes would need the anterior muscles released and quieted to
improve functioning. So focus on the shin and quadriceps to improve
ankle and hip
extension.

Thankfully, knowing your movement signatureTM can give insight into where to focus myofascial efforts, i.e. which muscles you need to roll out.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Coconut

You won’t see coconut on any Clean 15 or Dirty Dozen
lists anytime soon, because the general public has yet to catch on to
its fatty, nutty delights. That said, we Primal people eat coconut. We
sauté with coconut oil
and slather it onto vegetables, sweet potatoes, hair, skin, and
armpits. We drink and make curries with coconut milk and cream. We
obsess over coconut butter, paying tribute to its glory with a greasy
spoon. And when we’ve been running or training particularly hard – or
it’s hot out – we often reach for the coconut water. We like our coconut, so it’s in our best interest to determine whether we should be buying organic or not.
Luckily for us, it doesn’t look like organic coconut makes a big
difference. Several studies have looked for pesticide residues in
coconut products and come up virtually empty handed. There’s this 2008 study,
which was unable to detect any pesticide residues in crude coconut oil.
Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, which are generated during the coconut
flesh quick drying process and are carcinogenic, were detected in crude
coconut oil but were removed in the refining process. Virgin unrefined
coconut oil, then, may still contain these hydrocarbons, unless it’s wet-milled and processed without quick-drying the flesh. That goes for both organic and conventional coconut oil, to be clear.
In another study,
researchers examined 15 samples of coconut water using two different
methods of pesticide detection and were unable to detect any of the 11
pesticides they were looking for.
Coconut milk is also going to be as free from pesticides as any other
coconut product. Since it’s made from fresh flesh, not the dried,
heat-treated stuff, coconut milk should also be free of poly-aromatic
hydrocarbons.

Onions

Onions don’t just make you cry for cutting them, they make pests weep
at the thought of eating them. Onions are naturally resistant to pests,
which is probably why just 0.3% of onions tested for chemical residue
came up positive. Big Agra may cut corners and prioritize profit over
quality or consumer health, but that just means they won’t fork out the
money for chemicals if they don’t have to; they’re not comic book
villains, dumping drums of noxious endocrine disruptors and carcinogens
onto their crops to punish us. Not onion farmers, at least.
So, feel free to go wild with conventional onions, because there is
very little, if any, advantage to organic onions from a health
perspective. Unlike many other fruits and vegetables, conventionally grown onions have the same level of polyphenols as organically grown onions.

Avocado

Avocados are another safe food that ends up with some of the lowest pesticide residues around.
Maybe it’s the scaly skin and the way they just kinda “lurk” there up
in tree tricking pests into thinking they’re up against alligators.
Maybe it’s the fact that a bug got burned one too many times with a
beautiful looking avocado that turned out to be stringy and brown on the
inside. Maybe pests just hate waiting for an avocado to ripen
(who doesn’t?) and give up. Actually, even though a somewhat significant
amount of chemicals can be used on avocado orchards, they just don’t
make it into the fatty, delicious flesh we crave and consume.
Avocado farmers, both organic and conventional, do use
extensive amounts of copper as a fungicide. Copper is an essential
nutrient, but too much can be harmful. A single Florida avocado contains
0.9 mg, which is about 100% of the RDI, so don’t go around eating
several a day.

Honey

The idea of organic honey
is fantastic – who wouldn’t want to eat honey produced by bees who
dined exclusively on organic, wild, untouched, pure flowers? I sure
would.
But the reality is that bees will be bees. They’re going to buzz
around and get into trouble, and they’re not going to distinguish
between organic and conventionally-grown plants. I suppose you could
surround the bee with only organic plant life, but considering bees have
an average range of five kilometers from the hive
(and twice that when food is scarce), you’d have to control a lot of
land to do it. Plus, you know how bees have those cute furry bodies?
Yeah, that fur picks up all sorts of stuff from the air. Not only do you
have to worry about non-organic pollen, you also have to contend with
every non-organic airborne particle in the area.
Buy local
honey. Buy raw honey. Buy honey from someone who raised the bees and
(at least kinda sorta) knows where they spend their time. But don’t
shell out extra money for organic honey unless you happen to really like
that particular honey. Those first two characteristics – “local” and
“raw” – should come before organic.

Asparagus

I love asparagus, but even I balk at the astronomical price of
organic asparagus. Luckily, it’s one of the cleanest vegetables around.
When you read
that residues from nine different pesticides were found on it, though,
you might get a little worried until you look a little closer and
realize that the most prevalent of the chemicals – methomyl – was only
detected on 3.3% of samples tested.
Organic might eliminate that small probability of pesticides showing
up on your asparagus, but I don’t think it’s worth the price tag.
Conventional should be just fine. If you’re really worried, domestic
conventional (referring to the United States) is far better than imported conventional.

Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes are a hardy bunch, and the hardy among us – the
athletes, the lifters, the highly active – sometimes need a bit of
dietary starch to fuel their efforts. Conventional sweet potatoes are a
fine choice. Their leaves sometimes get eaten by bugs, but since that
rarely affects the viability of the underground tubers that people
actually eat, farmers generally don’t feel the need to protect the
leaves with agrochemicals.
However, sweet potatoes do sometimes have a problem with fungal
growth after harvesting, and the tubers have been known to receive a
quick dunk in a dicloran bath before being packed and shipped to curtail
this. Dicloran (not to be confused with the flame retardant known as
dichloran) is a fungicide that gets a “possible carcinogen” rating from “What’s on my food?” It’s also the only chemical to show up consistently in conventional sweet potatoes. On average, a kilogram of sweet potatoes contains 1.69 mg of dicloran. Based on toxicology studies that suggest a dicloran upper limit of 0.14 mg per kg of bodyweight,
a 60 kilogram human can easily get away with consuming up to 8.4 mg of
dicloran. Peel your sweet potatoes and you’ll get rid of even more.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Americans are living longer, with fewer deaths from heart disease and
cancer, but more chronic illnesses, an annual snapshot of the USA's
health shows.
The 2012 America's Health Rankings
highlight troubling levels of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure
and sedentary behavior. Medical advances are allowing more people to
live with those conditions.
The bottom line: Americans "are
living longer, sicker" with more chronic illness, says Reed Tuckson of
theUnited Health Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation that sponsors
the report with the American Public Health Association and the
Partnership for Prevention.STORY: Living to 100: 80% are women, report shows

For
the sixth consecutive year, Vermont tops the list of healthiest states,
says the report, which uses data from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, American Medical Association, Census Bureau and even
the FBI. It looks at 24 measures of health, including tobacco and
alcohol abuse, exercise, infectious diseases, crime rates, public health
funding, access to immunizations, premature birth rates and cancer and
heart disease rates.

States that are most successful on the
rankings "have good results in a majority of the conditions we
evaluate," Tuckson says. But states such as Mississippi and Louisiana,
which tied for last place, "are over represented in key measures like
tobacco consumption, lack of exercise and obesity — the fundamentals,"
he adds.

Although socioeconomic factors play an important role in
some states' consistent low rankings, "we know it is possible to
improve; states are capable of doing that," says Georges Benjamin,
executive director of the American Public Health Association. Key to
that effort is "taking lessons from things they do well and applying
them more vigorously to the things they are not doing well."
Louisiana
has low rates of binge drinking and a high rate of childhood
immunization, but it ranks in the bottom five states on 13 of 24 health
measures, including obesity and diabetes.
But "we don't have to
accept those" indicators, says Karen DeSalvo, health commissioner for
New Orleans. She says an extensive effort is underway "to get us to the
place we need to be … to be a healthy state."
States that showed
the most substantial improvement in rankings include New Jersey (up nine
places on the list); Maryland (up five). Alabama, Colorado,
Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island each moved up three.
Among the unhealthy behaviors the report cites:

More than a quarter (26.2%) of all Americans are sedentary, defined as
not doing any physical activity outside of work for 30 days. But it's
36% in Mississippi, and 35.1% in both Tennessee and West Virginia.

27.8% of U.S. adults are obese, defined as being roughly 30 or more
pounds over a healthy weight. That's 66 million people — more than the
entire population of the United Kingdom. In even the least obese state,
Colorado, more than 20% of the population is obese.

The
percentage of adults with diabetes is 9.5% nationally, but it's 12% or
higher in West Virginia, South Carolina and Mississippi.

30.8% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, but that ranges from a
low of 22.9% in Utah to a high of 40.1% in Alabama. High blood pressure,
or hypertension, is a primary risk for cardiovascular disease —
problems related to the heart and the blood vessels.

"There's
no way that this country can possibly afford the medical care costs and
consequences of these preventable chronic illnesses," says Tuckson. "We
have two freight trains headed directly into each other unless we take
action now."
"People have to be successful at taking accountability for their own health-related decisions."
Life
expectancy in the USA is now 78.5 years; premature deaths have dropped
18% since 1990, and deaths from cardiovascular disease are down 34.6%.
Cancer deaths are down 7.6%.Read More

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

It's an unpleasant fact of life that most mass-participation
endurance events start at (and sometimes before) the crack of dawn. But
it's not equally unpleasant for everyone: the world is divided into
morning types ("larks"), evening types ("owls"), and those who don't
have a pronounced preference either way. What if you're a wonderful
endurance athlete, but you just hate getting up in the morning? Will
this make it less likely that you persist in the sport?

That's basically the question that a group of South African scientists from the University of Cape Town tackled in a recent study published in Chronobiology International.
They compared four groups of people: 125 cyclists, 120 runners, 287
Ironman triathletes, and 96 active but non-competitive controls. The
first test they did was to administer the "Horne-Ostberg
Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire," which is used to distinguish
larks from owls.

Pretty big difference in the number of morning people in the athlete
groups compared to the control group. But this doesn't distinguish
between cause and effect: maybe years of pre-dawn rides have convinced
those cyclists that they really like getting up in the morning (because
if they didn't tell themselves that, they'd go crazy).

In this case, the "5 allele" is associated with shorter circadian
rhythms, which in turn translates to morning preference -- so people
born with morning preference are indeed (at least in this particular
sample of white South African men) more likely than the general
population to end up getting addicted to endurance sports, presumably
because of the time of day when most people train and compete.
So... who's going to found the first Evening Triathlon Association,
bringing endurance sports to the neglected owls of the world?

Monday, December 10, 2012

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com
Kids are not just little adults, and growing children who are strenuously exercising have several defining physiological characteristics that make them different than the older population. The following are 5 ways that training and racing nutrition should be different for kids and young active individuals (up to age 16).

1) Athletic girls can succeed on lower carbohydrate intake than athletic boys. In large nutritional surveys that have been done on young athletes ranging from 12-18 years old, the intake of female athletes is on average 3-4 grams per kilogram of body weight lower than male athletes. This seems to make sense, since studies in adult endurance athletes have shown that female endurance athletes tend to be able to oxidize more fat at higher intensities compared to men. An approximate level of carbohydrate intake that would be appropriate for a young athlete would be about 4 grams per kilogram in girls and 7 grams per kilogram in boys (remember there are 2.2 pounds in 1 kilogram). So a 90 pound young female athlete would need to eat around 165 grams of carbohydrate daily, or about 650 calories of carbohydrate.

2) Fat is the preferred exercise fuel in young athletes. In most studies, exercising children have shown 10-40% higher fat oxidation rates compared to exercising adults. Interestingly, very well trained exercising adults (such as Ironman triathletes) show these same high fat oxidation rates. While this shouldn’t be used as an excuse to “not eat” during exercise, it would be quite interesting to see studies of children given a higher fat intake prior to exercise compared to children given primarily carbs. I suspect that fueling children with avocados, coconuts, nuts and seeds may yield just as good results as filling them up with candy and energy bars.

3) Compared to exercising adults, exercising children burn lower amounts of storage carbohydrate, but higher amounts of carbohydrate from food sources. Rather than tapping into the body’s own carbohydrate stores during exercise, children tend to rely more upon carbohydrate sources from food. This is due to lower levels of the enzymes responsible for breaking down muscle carbohydrate to fuel, and is probably some type of carbohydrate conserving mechanism that leaves more storage carbohydrate for a child’s growth and development. While you might think that this should mean you make sure a child has adequate food available during a training session or race, since they’re less equipped to break down their own storage energy, this does not appear to be the case, as I point out below.

4) During exercise sessions 75 minutes or less, eating carbohydrates does not appear to give extra performance advantages in young athletes. As you learned earlier, children burn fat more efficiently than adults, and it appears that during exercise, this increased fat oxidation serves as a mechanism to stop any drop in blood glucose. Children’s bodies literally have the ability to downregulate the pathways responsible for converting carbohydrates into energy during exercise. Interestingly, free fatty acids, which indicate available fats to burn during exercise, increase in children during exercise, indicating a very strong ability of children to mobilize fat stores for energy and possibly even use energy sources that have higher amounts of fat. Once again, for exercising individuals who are under the age of 16, it may be beneficial to choose fat-based energy sources rather than sugar.

5) Regular adult sports drinks may not empty fast enough from a child’s stomach during exercise. In both children and adults, higher exercise intensities slow the rate at which fluids and fuels will pass from the stomach into the intestine, which means that less fuel is absorbed and utilized. However, this occurs to an even greater extent in children who are exercising at higher intensities, and the maximum amount of fluids (either water or a carbohydrate beverage) that a child can absorb per hour in these conditions will be approximately one bike-sized water bottle (about 20-24 ounces).

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Friday, December 7, 2012

Does the following ever happen to you?
You are buying something non food related, and at the check out counter you see a tasty snack that you just can’t resist? You rationalize that it’s only a tiny treat, you need a pick-me-up, and that it’s really just a 100 calorie sin out of 1600 healthy calories you are eating today.
http://blog.fooducate.com
Well that’s what happened to our friend Nena the other day. She eats healthy, cooks most meals, is only 5 pounds overweight, and usually stays away from junk food. Somehow she found herself holding her childhood favorite – Twix – which she proceeded to wolf down in a few minutes.
Nena knows Twix is not healthy by any long shot. But the packaging clearly says 110 calories, so she was not too concerned. it was only after she ate all 4 “fingers” that she realized the calorie information was PER SERVING, not per package.
Twix Portion DistortionReading the small print, Nena realized she had actually consumed 440 calories, which is over 25% of her daily calorie budget! This was an unintended snacking occasion come-calorie-bomb that was led on by very craftily (shall we say deceiving?) presentation of nutrition information to consumers.
The Twix package is single use, once you tear it, you need to eat everything in it. True, you can share with friends, or your kids, or save some for later in your purse (hoping the chocolate won’t melt all over your things). But most people will eat all 4 pieces as a single portion.
This is just one small example of how little tricks are played on us to get us to eat more crap.
How have you been duped recently?

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

http://www.charlespoliquin.com
Drinking alcohol will stop fat burning, erase performance gains from training, and delay recovery. You should avoid it!
That said, it is useful to have a few strategies to speed detoxification of alcohol since it’s holiday time. In addition, these tips will help protect you from everyday toxins, such as pollution, pesticides, and xenoestrogens.
First, knowing what alcohol does to your body can help you choose to take action to prevent its ill effects. Remember, alcohol contains 7 calories a gram—nearly double that of carbs and protein—and when you drink it, all other metabolic processes in the body are put on hold until it’s metabolized. Fat and carbohydrate burning are halted, as is tissue rebuilding and protein synthesis. Alcohol can depress growth hormone production and increase levels of aromatase that turn testosterone to estrogen.
Alcohol is metabolized by the liver, but the process causes oxidative stress and chronic drinking leads to significant damage and fat gain inside the liver. The bright side of all the misery caused by alcohol is that if you drink responsibly, there are ways to speed detoxification. Curcumin, green tea, and milk thistle have all been shown to blunt the ill effects of alcohol and help eliminate it.
Curcumin is a super nutrient found in the spice turmeric, and multiple animal studies show it protects the liver from alcohol. For example, one study showed that giving rats curcumin significantly decreased the acute inflammation caused by alcohol, while enhancing detoxification.
A similar study showed green tea extract can protect the liver from alcohol and accelerate detox. Researchers found that the antioxidants (called catechins) in green tea inhibited absorption of alcohol in the gastrointestinal tract, leading to less of an inflammatory response and faster elimination.
Finally, milk thistle can speed the elimination of toxins through the liver and protect it from damage. It’s a well known liver tonic that has been shown to have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects when supplemented regularly.
Additional strategies to accelerate detox from alcohol include the following:
• Drink LOTS of water with electrolytes before and after drinking.
• Focus on eating high-protein, low-carb foods. Always eat protein and vegetables before drinking to minimize cravings for alcohol and high-carb, fatty foods.
• Train hard. Studies shows athletes excrete more toxins in urine than sedentary people.
• Remember, you have complete control over everything you put in your mouth

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

http://www.cyclingtips.com.au
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) defines blood doping as “The misuse of certain techniques and/or substances to increase one’s red blood cell mass, which allows the body to transport more O2 to muscles and therefore increase stamina and performance.”
At the heart of doping in endurance sports such as cycling, the drug you’ve probably heard most about is EPO. Formally known as erythropoietin, EPO is a hormone that controls red blood cell production. Hemoglobin mass is a key factor for maximal exercise capacity. When EPO is injected into an athlete and used as a performance-enhancing drug, it is classified as an erythropoiesis (red blood cell production) stimulating agent.
READ MORE

Monday, December 3, 2012

Your gut is essential for more than just instincts. It has to make sure
that your body gets fed, which is a very complex job: The stomach churns
food; the small intestine breaks the mixture (called chyme) into
smaller molecules so that the body can absorb nutrients; and the large
intestine converts what’s not needed into—well, you know. When the
process works as it should, you’re happily oblivious. But when one part
goes awry, so can your quality of life. For the good of your gut, here’s
the full digest on what’s normal and what’s not.

The Psychology of Your Stomach
Why do we have so little control over what goes on in the digestive tract? Because the gut has a mind of its own.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Do sprint interval training to lose fat fast and improve conditioning.
Research shows that sprint interval training is the best conditioning
method for fat loss, but you have to use a precise interval program in
order to get results—haphazardly making up intervals is not the best way
to go.

There are a wide variety of interval programs out there and research
shows that they yield different results based on how they stress the
body to adapt. For example, a recent study showed that an interval model
called 30-20-10 was highly effective at improving health markers and
performance in recreational runners, but it probably isn’t the best
method for fat loss because it’s not intense enough to generate high
levels of lactate or growth hormone.

The 30-20-10 model has trainees perform four 5-minute intervals in which
they jog for 30 seconds, run at a moderate intensity for 20 seconds,
and sprint for 10 seconds, and then repeat. After doing the program for 7
weeks, trainees improved performance on a 1,500 meter run by 21 seconds
and by 48 seconds on a 5 km run. They also decreased their systolic
blood pressure by 5 mm Hg and improved cholesterol levels.

Body composition wasn’t measured, but there was no change in muscle pump
activity, indicating that although the program improved performance and
health, it wasn’t metabolically taxing enough to produce significant
fat loss or muscle development.

In comparison, a 20-minute sprint interval program that used 60
intervals of all-out 8-second sprints followed by 12 seconds recovery on
a ergometer cycle resulted in 2 kg fat loss and 1 kg muscle development
in untrained men. The same program produced 2.5 kg fat loss in women.
Note that the difference between this program and the 30-20-10 method is
that for each minute trained, trainees sprint all out for a total of 24
seconds, compared to only 10 seconds with 30-20-10. The greater time
spent working at maximal intensity is the difference in metabolic stress
for fat loss.

For instance a very demanding 1 to 1 interval-to-rest program has
produced significant fat loss and performance enhancement in trained
athletes. This program used four 4-minute intervals with a 30-second
sprint and 30-second jogging recovery.

Another model that allowed participants to lose 9 times more body fat
than a steady-state aerobic program used 10 sprints of 15 seconds each
increasing to 15 sprints of 30 seconds each as trainees began to adapt.
The recovery period was based on heart rate—once it returned to 120
beats per minute the next interval was performed.

A third model that produced a significant 2 kg loss of body fat in
trained runners included two interval protocols alternated for four
sprint sessions a week: Ten intervals of 30-second all-out sprints with
90-seconds active rest and 6 intervals of 2-mintue maximal intensity
sprints followed by 90 second active rest. The maximal intensity sprints
were performed at the maximal running speed achieved during a treadmill
stage test to exhaustion, so they weren’t at the maximal speed that the
trainees could run.

The take away is that you must program interval training to reach your
goal and if that goal is fat loss, near maximal intensity sprints in the
30 second range to produce lactate buildup are ideal. Rest periods
should be active rather than passive, and 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 work-to-rest
intervals have proven effective for eliciting a growth hormone response
for fat loss.